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The Id and The Odyssey; Episode 77

The Hustle

Rich racked the
balls.

“Barkeep!”
Butch said. “How much is left in that bottle?”

“Almost empty,”
the bartender said.

“Bring it,”
Butch said.

The bartender
brought it to him.

Butch held the
bottle up to the light. “Just enough to steady my nerves.” He
said to the bartender pointing to the pile of money on the table, “On
your way back take out the money for the bottle.” He looked at the
crowd around the table. “Consider it an investment to assure your
winnings.”

Claw had a good
break and sunk a striped ball. He sunk three more before missing.
Butch studied the table and sunk two and missed. Claw pocketed one
and missed his next shot. Butch smiled and ran the table.

Butch walked over
to the table where the money laid. He picked up the keys to the jeep
and tossed them to Rich. “Get the motor running.” He looked at
Rudy and Gordy and motioned with his eyes to leave.

As Rich, Gordy,
and Rudy exited the bar Butch stuffed the money inside his shirt.

“You hustled
us,” Claw said as Butch slung his jacket on.

Butch said
nothing and walked to the door. Two of the lobstermen stood in his
way. Butch quickly dashed for the side exit and burst through it. He
circled around the building and jumped in the jeep.

“Let’s get
the hell out of here!” Butch said.

Rich jammed the
jeep in gear and drove over the sidewalk and into the street. He
turned toward downtown and sharply on to side street. The fear they
had at first turned to uncontrollable laughter.

As Rich turned
quickly down an alley he said, “The movies lied. The reporters are
always tough guys. They never run from fights.”

“Maybe they
should teach karate and judo in college and you can’t get your
journalism degree until you take ’em,” Rudy said.

“It don’t
take a college course to teach you how to use a beer bottle as a
weapon,” Butch said. “However I never knew how to use one as a
weapon until I attended college.”

They drove toward
Thomaston.

“My brothers,”
Rich said to them all. “Our brother and friend, Butch, is a
teetotaler.”

“My secret is
out,” Butch said.

“What secret?”
Gordy said.

“Tell ‘em,”
Rich said.

“I bring a
empty bottle of whiskey and fill it with tea. The bartender dabs a
little whiskey on his finger and rubs it along the rim of the glass.
It smells and looks like whiskey.”

“So the
bartender is in on it,” Rudy said. “I owe him $20.”

“How does he
know when to do it?” Gordy said.

“Clever,”
Rich said. “Every time you call him barkeep.”

“That’s the
cue, lad,” Butch said.

“I hope those
guys don’t come looking for us,” Gordy said.

“Yeah,” Rich
said, “I don’t think this thing will do over 50 with four
people.”

Butch counted the
money. “$437,” he said. “That’s a hundred each and we’ll
give the barkeep $37 for an unusually profitable night. In fact, that
is my best night ever. This is just one of the many ways I worked my
way through college.”

“What was
another?” Rudy said.

“I ran a term
paper exchange and was stripper in gentleman’s club one summer,”
Butch said. “I started late in the evening when all the girls
wanted to go home and all the customers were too drunk to tell the
difference. To this day every time I hear Night Train I start peeling
off my socks.”

Rich drove every
one back to The Beacon.

Gordy got out of
the jeep and walked to his car. “I got to get bigger friends.”

Rich
drove back to his apartment. He pulled the jeep behind the garage so
it couldn’t be seen from the street. He trudged up the two flights
of steps and into the apartment. He spent three hours at the
typewriter tapping out the night‘s events on paper. He laid down in
bed and chuckled quietly before going off to sleep.

From Kenton Lewis: You Must Read This First To Know What The Heck Goes On Here

This site contains mostly fiction. Currently a novel is posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday entitled Beyond Beyond. It is broken down into short episodes between two and four pages each. Thus, if you enter on anything other than episode 1, it would be good the scroll down to find previous episodes.

The archives are full of short stories. Some short stories are very short, just one posting. Others are broken down into episodes also.

Every post contains 350 to 1,500 words.

Anyway, I hope you visit several times a week.

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This Is He

Taken shortly after my beheading. I refused to give up coffee. "Not from my cold dead hands!"